Home > Olives & Thorns > Archives > 2008 > September > 09 > Entry
An order to evict, then defiance
Fawzieh and Mohammad Kurd say they aren’t leaving their home.
“It’s my life. It’s my memory,” Fawzieh told me the other day of her house, which was built legally in 1956 in what was then the Jordanian side of a divided Jerusalem. “There is no place like this.”
This summer, the Israeli High Court of Justice upheld an eviction order on their home in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, ruling that two religious Jewish organizations purchased the property when the city was under Ottoman sovereignty. Palestinians carry pre-1948 deeds to some 60 percent of property in old West Jerusalem, but Israeli courts have never ruled in their favor.
Since the court ruling, the Kurds have received hundreds of sympathizers, from Israeli human rights activists to European and American diplomats. A handful of foreigners sleep on their terrace and plan to chain themselves to the front door if police come to remove to them from the house.
Palestinians say the eviction order is part of an Israeli plan to take over the neighborhood, which is close to Old City, and the site of the tomb of a revered Jewish high priest from ancient times.
Several of the Kurd’s neighbors are Jews who purchased their homes from Palestinians over the past decade. They live under armed guard and their children play in a playground that is off-limits to Palestinian children.
The Kurd home has become a cause celebre for left-wing activists. The home is adorned with banners decrying “Israeli Apartheid.” But for the Palestinian couple who live there — their children are grown and have moved to homes of their own — who come from refugee families, remaining is a matter of pride and justice.
“I’m relying totally on God,” Fawzieh said. “I believe God has 99 names. None of those 99 names is injustice.”
Comments
By Kurdish
September 10, 2008 7:53 AM | Link to this
I fully denounce the israili courts decision to remove kurd, she and other palastinians must not leave theire land which they have lived for thausands of years.
Israil have evry right to exists but within its boundaries not on other nations land.
Israil does not help itself by doing such barbareous crimes.
Long live kurd.